Frank Viele to Join New Supergroup Led by Zach Myers of Shinedown

On the eve of the release of his debut full-length solo CD, FRANK VIELE, the road warrior named Live Act of the Year at the 2014 New England Music Awards, has been selected to open the first month of dates on the “Night Like This” U.S. Tour of Allen, Mack, Myers, Moore, the new supergroup led by Zach Myers of Shinedown and members of Ingram Hill.

Viele, the former leader of popular New England jam outfit Frank Viele & The Manhattan Project whose “new music with an old soul” has been winning over East Coast audiences for half his young life, is quickly winning over critics as well with FALL YOUR WAY,due April 7 from Horizon Music Group. Newly featured in American Songwriter and No Depression, Viele will open for Allen, Mack, Myers, Moore with a run of East Coast and Midwest dates in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nebraska, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky. More stops are being added. Before that leg of the tour begins, Viele will be opening for Pat McGee at The Tin Angel in Philadelphia (March 28).

Viele launches his yearlong U.S. Tour with a VIP Record Release Show March 21 in New Haven. He also will be appearing at Soupstock Music & Arts Festival in Shelton, CT, and a number of other summer festivals.

Very much the Everyman of Singer-Songwriters, Viele mixes dry wit with a fiercely soulful delivery on FALL YOUR WAY. The album showcases the Connecticut singer-songwriter’s signature whiskey shot, bluesy vocals over the “constant strum” guitar style he picked up as a young teenager tailgating in the parking lots of Dave Matthews Band concerts. Produced at Horizon Studios in Connecticut by Vic Steffens (Harry Connick Jr., Sly Stone, Lita Ford, The Blues Brothers, Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Bobby Brown), FALL YOUR WAY also features a monster lineup of contributors, led by blues rock guitar great Joe Bonamassa and members of heralded New England “new funk” fusion group Kung Fu, featuring guitar ace Tim Palmieri of The Breakfast. Also checking in are Emmy-winning jazz-blues sax and trumpet player Bill Holloman (Chic, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Steve Winwood).

Most of the songs on FALL YOUR WAY sprung from the aftermath of a “tough” relationship, including the choices Viele faced at the crossroads his career pursuits forced upon his love life. That common thread is epitomized on “Broken Love Song,” the album’s second single. It features Bonamassa on guitar, giving the track the “dirtiest” blues guitar Viele could find to express the emotion within the song.

Viele first gained notoriety as leader of popular New England funk-rock outfit Frank Viele & The Manhattan Project, which shared numerous major festival bills with moe., Umphrey’s McGee, Keller Williams, Karl Denson, Ozomatli, Railroad Earth and other leading acts on the jam circuit. FALL YOUR WAY is his first full album since going solo in 2012. And he’s been a fixture on the road ever since, playing up to 200 nights per year, and opening for the Legendary Wailers, Gavin DeGraw, The Marshall Tucker Band, Xavier Rudd, Ingrid Michaelson, Blues Traveler, Foreigner, Brett Michaels, the Average White Band, and Ambrosia, among others.

“Easy Money,” the album’s swinging, sexy first single with the “Steely Dan-esque swagger” (Palace of Rock), is a salute to Viele’s father, a “quintessential” blue-collar Italian immigrant and Elvis Presley fan who bought his son his first electric guitar with this caveat: “Don’t quit your day job – you’re no Elvis.” The “double extra groovy” (Rust Magazine) track “showcases a true ‘acoustic funk’ rhythm matched with an energetic cadence and vocal pattern” (Music Times), and the animated music video is a nod to Viele’s passion for cartoons, particularly The Simpsons.

A former Guitar World columnist, he’s a blue-collar entrepreneur with “a Southern blues rock sensibility” (The Lo-Down), whose plans to become a doctor were overcome in college by his passion for the music he’d been writing and performing since his teens. He became a business major with a music performance and wound up graduating valedictorian of the business school with the Wall Street Journal Award.